Excerpt from Has the North Pole Been Discovered?: An Analytical and Synthetical Review of the Published Narratives of the Two Arctic Explorers I was born in East Dennis, Mass., in 1841. My father, my paternal and maternal grandfathers were seafaring men. They were masters, owners and managers of sailing ships. I naturally took to the sea. At the age of 15, I started out before the mast in the sailing ship Wild Hunter on a voyage around the world. At 17, I made my second voyage around the world on the ship Belle of the West as third mate. At the age of 19. I made my third voyage on the same ship with the same captain but as first mate. I never was a second mate. On my fourth voyage, I was captain of the bark Egypt. I quit the sea in 1865. I was not long at it; eight years; but I always made long voyages, and on those voyages I traversed the ocean spaces quite extensively. Every year, I was in some part of the Orient; and almost as often in Europe, South America and Australia. During this time, I crossed the equator in every sea through which it passes, and crossed it 20 times. I look back upon those few years at sea with ex ceedingly great interest and great pleasure. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.